Sports

With the Brickyard 400 a few days away, state officials are stepping up efforts to target sex trafficking.

Indianapolis Representative Christina Hale says officials have made door-to-door visits to Speedway businesses posting fliers urging victims of sex trafficking to call a state helpline, and urging everyone to call authorities if they see early-teens who seem unusually fearful and under an adult's control.

The start of the Colts‘ three-day minicamp for its draft picks and undrafted free agents was coach Chuck Pagano‘s first meeting with reporters since the release of the NFL‘s findings that the Patriots deliberately deflated footballs before crushing the Colts in the AFC championship game.

Pagano sidestepped questions about the report Friday, saying only that the team is, in his words, "ready to move on."

Cincinnati's Octavius Ellis was in tears when he left the court with 16 minutes left to play in his team's opening-round game with Purdue Thursday night.

The Bearcats star center had just been assessed a flagrant-2 foul and been ejected for throwing an elbow to the jaw of Purdue center A.J. Hammons. He clearly thought he might have cost his team a chance to win.

But though Ellis had injured his team's odds, it was a Purdue team that struggled all year to finish games that couldn't deliver a knockout punch.

After learning they’d received a number nine seed in the NCAA basketball tournament, members of the Purdue men’s basketball team were variously relieved and concerned about their past struggles.

Forward Rapheal Davis said he was looking forward to watching film of the Boilermakers' opening round opponent, Cincinnati, but noted that most every pundit had written the team off in the preseason and as recently as a couple months ago.

Knowing the importance of winning its final regular season game against Illinois Sunday, Purdue's men's basketball team played perhaps its worst opening 15 minutes of any game this year.

With the Illini's best player, Rayvonte Rice, scoring seemingly at will against the man-to-man defense played by Dakota Mathias, the visitors built a 13-point lead and held the Boilermakers to just ten points through the first 15 minutes.

But changes made in the last five minutes of the half turned the game around.

We know about college athletes because of their performance in the athletic arena. But what’s the life of a Division I athlete like when they’re not in competition?

This week on WBAA’s Off The Field With Morgan Burke, we ask what sorts of accommodations are made for athletes – both in their classes and with their coaches. Can athletes participate in the college experience as fully as most students?

It's hard to tell much from watching warm-ups. Shots are taken, passes made, slam dunks attempted. But those slams told the tale Wednesday for Purdue's Basil Smotherman, whose energy fueled his team whenever the sellout crowd's adrenaline began to wane.

Though Rafael Davis led the Boilers with 19 points, it was Smotherman's end line-to-end line pushes that defined Purdue in a 83-67 win over a top-20 Indiana team.